


A Very Large Number

by ausmac



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-15 00:32:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8035087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ausmac/pseuds/ausmac
Summary: Dedicated to my glorious Earth, on this glorious day. I play with canon a bit, but it just seemed to work for the story, so there you go.





	A Very Large Number

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this way back when and it remains one of my personal favorite stories.

The first time Sheppard had told him, he hadn't got it. It was just too big a number.  
  
That was just before he saw Earth for the first time as more than just an image. Saw it from orbit, through the observation windows aboard the "Apollo". Even then, it was just too big a number.  
  
It was awe and shock all mingled with a small shake of his head, and a sense of completion like reaching the end of a long journey he hadn't even known he'd been on.  
  
It was a beautiful world. He'd known that from looking at pictures, but seeing it in person, as it hung enormous and blue before him, made it seem more so. Ronon had seen many worlds in his travels, some of them extraordinary, but there was a special beauty to this world. Rich with oxygen, wrapped in its mantle of clouds, its continents swimming in it's enormous oceans, it was perfect. Yes, that was the word. Perfect.  
  
And the number still amazed him.  
  
"How much is a billion?" he'd asked, when Sheppard had told him. The number was mind stretching. And not just one. Six and a half of them. Six. And a half. Thousand. Million.   
  
No world he'd ever known had held so many people. In a galaxy regularly farmed by the wraith, a world was lucky to have five or ten million. Six thousand million was a number that just couldn't be grasped. And looking from space, at Earth's gleaming, pristine beauty, there was no way to tell that it succoured so very many souls.  
  
He'd finally been allowed to walk upon it after they'd assured themselves that he wouldn't run amok, and he'd found it the most alien place he'd ever visited. The cities were chaotic. John had taken him to New York and the place almost overwhelmed him. Towers that loomed above him like glass-sheathed mountains, stretching for miles around him, filled will massive hordes of people. And noise, so much noise. They made noise as if there was absolutely nothing in the Universe they needed be afraid of, as if nothing could hear them no matter how loud they were. They spoke and laughed and yelled and screamed like a free people. Free of any fear of what monsters might lurk in the dark to hear them.  
  
He went to other places, so many places. Places of snow, of vast fields of ice that seemed to go forever; forests with trees so enormous they were like hills themselves, and some of them were so old they seemed to understand his touch. He'd visited Africa, saw the herds that blackened the ground with their numbers, watched the lions hunt, stood in the middle of the great desert and heard only the wind, eternally moving the sand. There were immense silences that formed a counterpart to the noise of humanity, silences so vast it seemed unnatural to be the same place at the same time.  
  
The ocean fascinated him, it was so alive. The Atlantic was wide and dark and tumultuous, as wild a sea as any he'd ever seen. Typically of this contradictory world, the Pacific was vast and blue-green, moody and glorious, noisy with its sea birds, a place of coral reefs and islands and huge, singing whales.  
  
When he finally left to return to his own galaxy, he watched Earth grow smaller in the window behind and began to understand his friends' fanatic, driven need to protect and defend. While there might be bigger world, richer worlds, there was only one Earth, only one cradle from where all humanity had come. It's loss would diminish the Universe.  
  
He saw Sheppard's reflection in the window, waited for the question.  
  
"So, what'da ya think?"  
  
"I think," he said slowly, "that if it were my world, I'd treat it with more respect."  
  
"I agree with that," Sheppard said.  
  
"And I'd defend it to the death."  
  
Sheppard nodded. "I agree with that, too."  
  
They stood watching until it vanished amidst the stars.


End file.
